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Archive for December, 2008

I traveled down a little used road through the deep woods, traversing a path that grew less and less navigable with each mile. Deeper and deeper we went into that unknown world, until we broke into the open to find a great field of huge, rotting stumps——stumpland it’s called. It was an awesome sight with stumps everywhere. I dropped to my knees and tried to reach around one stump, only to find that I couldn’t begin to encompass it. Think of the stories those old stumps could tell, stories of tough lumberjacks who faced the wilderness in below zero weather to harvest trees for the lumber barons of the 1890’s——stories of death at the hands of a swinging limb or of illness that was treated only with tobacco juice.

Surely you’ve read of the wild, drunken melees that took place in cities, where men were stomped upon and killed without retribution, but have you walked with those same men as they braved the icy wilds of the great woods, where a man might be struck down and killed by a swinging limb or where an exploding load of logs might come crashing down upon its builders.

Come with me and we’ll watch as the load grows taller and taller and then makes its way into the newspapers as a contestant in a loading contest——or as the sleighs go racing along roads that were deliberately iced to make them fly by. Watch with me as a village rises in the deep woods or a swing dingle carries a hot lunch to hungry lumberjacks.

These are only a few of the events you may experience through my book, Footprints Under the Pines. As you travel deeper and deeper into that wild untamed land, you’ll see life as it was in that brutal world. You’ll walk and talk with those tough men who peopled the lumber camps of the 1890’s.